WMC Review: Nicholas Collins at Harold Golen Gallery

Handmade Electronic Music by Nicolas Collins Harold Golen Gallery, Miami Sunday, March 30, 2008 Better Than: Making music using GarageBand There’s beauty in chaos, especially when electronic hardware hacker Nicolas Collins gets his hands on some odd machines and lets his mind come up with unusual, yet stunning sounds. Long…

WMC Review: Bassnectar at Circa 28

Antidote party, featuring Bassnectar and the Freestylers Circa 28, Miami Sunday, March 30 Better than: A ripe, juicy peach on a hot summer afternoon while your boombox spills the top 40. A good amount of closing joints were poppin’ off Sunday night to see the close of WMC ’08, but…

WMC Review: Underworld at the Ultra Music Festival

Underworld at Ultra Music Festival Bicentennial Park Saturday, March 29, 2008 Even after 10 years of the Ultra Music Festival and 23 years of Winter Music Conference, it’s still sometimes difficult to fathom the onslaught this week brings to Miami. I mean, really. Pulling myself outta Moby’s set in the…

Last Night: Handsome Furs with Violens at PS14

Handsome Furs, Violens Thursday, March 27, 2008 PS14 Better Than: Fighting the WMC crowds for a taste of something electronic. While the majority of Miami pulsed to the sounds of big name DJs at Winter Music Conference, a select group of indie-minded hipsters enjoyed the electronic-infused rock show by Montreal…

Madonna’s “Four Minutes” Release Party

Michelle F. Solomon DJ Bob Sinclar livened up the party remixing the party’s name sake song. Madonna “Four Minutes” WMC Release Party Friday, March 28 Penthouse At The Raleigh Hotel, South Beach We knew Madonna wouldn’t show, but there was just a faint glimmer of hope as they dragged in…

WMC Review: Fool’s Gold Showcase at White Room

Fool’s Gold Records showcase The White Room, Miami March 28, 2008 Better Than: All the sleep you’re missing from WMC, times 10 Although most of the brouhaha was supposedly occurring Friday night over at Ultra, one seemingly underground party emerged from the woodworks of Downtown Miami. Dubbed by LA Riots…

WMC Review: Justice at Ultra Music Festival

Justice at Ultra Music Festival Bicentennial Park Friday, March 28, 2008 Better Than: Whatever X those chicks next to me were rolling face on I obviously wasn’t surprised in the slightest to see the typical ravers, rollers and ridiculous public behavior at Ultra, a fest known for its array of…

Beat Masters Klever and A-Trak Kill It At Suite/Snatch

Tracy Block A-Trak confirmed his incomparable spinning skills Thursday night at Suite, showing serious candidacy for best WMC set thus far. Last Night: “Wish You Were Here” at Suite and Snatch Better Than: A hot and fresh box of Krispy Kremes after blazing up a fatty. Although the snooty door…

Last Night: Bass Sessions at Nocturnal

Tracy Block Craze ripped a sick never-ending set at Nocturnal Wednesday, March 26 which had beat lovers gettin’ their groove on from the window to the wall. Last Night: Bass Sessions at Nocturnal Better Than: The best ‘90s booty mix you ever bought Downtown Miami’s Nocturnal night club certainly had…

VIP Badge Grants Access to Best Chill Spot

Today: The Armani Exchange Music Lounge at the Hotel Raleigh Penthouse Better than: Last night’s hangover from WMC kickoff gigs and jet lag combined VIP constitutes access to a slew of stellar events, but during WMC, being “Very Important” grants you access to one of the choicest chill spots on…

Witch Board Blues

The legend is such: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, six-string slinger and otherworldly composer for The Mars Volta, was one day rummaging around a junk shop in Jerusalem when he stumbled upon a Ouija board. Never one to pass up a chance at cosmic fate, he bought the thing and then brought it…

Twilight Zone

Soulja Boy might know how to “Crank Dat,” but Detroit’s DJ Godfather still had to crank the kid up several notches — and maybe Superman that ho — for his unofficial remix. Not a problem; really, it was all in a day’s work for the head of longtime ghettotech label…

Acceptable in the ’00s

Some critics just don’t get it. Or maybe they just don’t get it enough. ‘Cause if they did, they wouldn’t get miffed about Calvin Harris’s sexy two-step. Sure, the cat swings with more than a little LCD Soundsystem; yes, his debt to fellow Scotsman Mylo is self-evident; and he’d undoubtedly…

dirtybird records

Though an official label for only three years, dirtybird records and its quad crew of freq-y producer/DJs are no fledglings. San Francisco-based Claude VonStroke, Justin Martin, Christian Martin, and Worthy have been flapping their wings since around 2000. They first built a Yay Area reputation pushing air as support DJs…

Gui Boratto

At a time when São Paulo, Brazil, gets a whole lot of ink in the hipster press for its street-hewn favela beats, city resident Guilherme Boratto is focused on an entirely different sound altogether. In fact it’s one that often has him mistaken for a native of a whole different…

Daz-I-Kue

The Dirty South has a fascinating new musical addition, with Londoner Daz-I-Kue now dividing his time between the UK and Atlanta. This should open up a world of possibilities for a fellow already known across the pond for creating complex yet insanely grooving records. They soar past other so-called black…

Damian Lazarus

Before settling into his current and hopefully permanent role as a producer and DJ, Damian Lazarus wore a few different hats in the music and media businesses. In the early Nineties, he was an editor for London style mag Dazed and Confused, and followed that journey with a sidestep into…

Amp Fiddler

Hailing from Detroit, this singer and keyboard player is more like a man with a mission. Amp Fiddler travels in a multitude of directions, challenging the listener as he switches among soul, funk, and dance, keeping a keen eye on the present and future of music while still paying homage…

Night of the Weirds

Inspired by a subculture that has taken years to coalesce into a shared identity, the free monthly Night of the Weirds was first mounted at Churchill’s in August 2007. Planned for the first Tuesday of every month, the event was created by Jeff Rollason of www.nartworld.com and has since been…

Señor Flavio

Argentina’s Flavio Mandinga, one of the founding members of Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, has crafted a solo project that explores various sonic textures and defies genre classification. Simply listen to “Ministra,” a rocksteady-tempo track seemingly inspired by early UB40 with a touch of psychedelics. Later comes “Polaroid 66,” which draws from…

Fuck Buttons

Despite the eyebrow-raising moniker’s aggressive overtones, the Bristol, England duo of Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power wants little more than to give your cerebellum a therapeutic, thoroughly intense sound massage. With Street Horrrsing, these Fuck Buttons engineer a sort of reverse, photonegative, canary-in-a-coal-mine scenario, threading strands of coruscating and…